Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Party for Socialism and Liberation: "Baltimore's Rebellion: What Happens to a Dream Deferred"

If the young people of Ferguson had not rebelled,
Mike Brown’s name would have been forgotten. The town would still have the same
mayor and police chief. The cops would still be fining and arresting Black
people for every conceivable thing, including “Manner of Walking in Roadway,”
“High Grass and Weeds,” and even bleeding on police uniforms during a beat-down.
There would have been no Justice Department investigations or presidential
commissions. If the young people of Ferguson had not rebelled, the city would
be, for most of the country, just another dot on the map; just another forgotten
impoverished Black community.

Now the whole world knows Ferguson. The people who
rose up declare their hometown with pride. And now the whole world knows
Baltimore and they will remember Freddie Gray’s name.

“They are destroying their own neighborhoods!” the
news anchors shout. Yes, and Nat Turner destroyed “his own” plantation. We
wouldn’t be surprised if some of his associates first ransacked the cupboards
either.

Was Baltimore not destroyed before yesterday? Who
really tore up its neighborhoods? Who split the city’s spine? Which 9th graders
at Forest Park or Fredrick Douglass high school boarded up the city’s 47,000
vacant properties? Was it the Bloods or the Crips that eliminated or outsourced
100,000 manufacturing jobs? Which teenagers let the city’s streets and services
erode? Was it the kid with the red or black bandanna that cut the after-school
programs? Which one recently settled lawsuits for the brutal beatings of Jerriel
Lyles, Venus Green and Starr Brown? And which one severed Freddie Gray’s
neck?

Take a 5-minute walk through any of the forgotten
neighborhoods where yesterday’s clashes took place. From every angle society is
telling these young people, “we do not give a damn about you,” and now they are
returning the middle finger. They feel they have nothing to lose.

That is the essential truth that all the racist
commentary and liberal lectures are leaving out.

The first rule of struggle, learned by every striking
worker and every police brutality activist, is that you cannot trust the
corporate media to tell the real story and give the people’s perspective. The
retelling of Saturday’s violence near Camden Yards left out the fact that
thousands had marched powerfully and without incident until they came into
contact with groups of drunk white racists who provoked and assaulted them.
Photos of white protesters coming to the assistance of their Black counterparts
were portrayed as the opposite, as if there was a “race riot” initiated by
aggressive Black people. A white woman photographed supposedly being robbed was,
according to eyewitnesses, actually lunging for a Black man’s bag.

Then came the lie about the Bloods, Crips and Black
Guerrilla Family – the claim that they had signed a truce to jointly kill cops.
In fact, their truce was aimed at unifying the city’s young Black men at a
critical time of struggle. These organizations have been in the streets – along
with the Nation of Islam and other community groups – trying to minimize looting
and refocus the youth’s righteous militancy.

That militancy has to be understood and accepted. It
is not going away. The young people in the streets are tired of hearing that
they must work within the very system that is brutalizing them – the same system
that keeps letting killer cops walk. And although many tactics have displayed
the people’s unity and power, from die-ins to mass marches, these have not
materially changed conditions on the ground, nor stopped the epidemic of police
terror. Even with a Black mayor, attorney general and president, there has been
no justice. President Obama called those on the streets “thugs” who need to “be
treated like criminals.” So when the politicians and community misleaders say
“this violence accomplishes nothing,” many young people rightfully wonder, “and
what has your way accomplished?”

As the young people came to feel their collective
power, they have first gone after the easiest targets, the retail stores in
their own neighborhoods. The police and the politicians above them were of
course perfectly willing to let this happen.

When state authority appears to collapse, people go
after the things they have long been denied or cannot normally afford. For many
in Baltimore, that includes basic household items, food, cleaning supplies and
diapers – which is what one could see being taken from CVS.

But the phenomenon of property destruction and
looting is common to all rebellions and revolutions throughout history. The
American Revolution’s Sons of Liberty, who we’re taught to admire and who
today’s Tea Party claims to follow, sacked the wine cellars of their enemies,
broke their windows and dragged them out of their homes to humiliate them in the
streets. Of course, this was not the conduct of the most serious and dedicated
rebels, but no one teaches that such excesses and drunken revelry invalidated
the American Revolution. That event is understood for its deeper social
causes.

In fact, revolutionary action and violence is upheld
as a righteous thing as long as it happened over 200 years ago — and was led by
rich white men and slaveholders!

The PSL is joining with those on the ground in
Baltimore who are making the case that it is far better to direct the unfolding
rebellion towards the real power: City Hall, the Inner Harbor, the neighborhoods
where the the ruling class luxuriates and the Wall Street banks that directed
the city’s de-industrialization. This rebellion needs to spread to cities and
towns across the country, among all poor and oppressed people. It needs to be
supported by people of conscience from all walks of life, who understood that
this country is overdue for a change, overdue for a revolution.

All that requires more organization and coordination.
That requires dedicated revolutionaries who will first and foremost stand with
the brave young rebels rather than lecture and condemn them.

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ABOUT ME

I'm a writer, speaker, and sociologist who's made a life's work out of explaining exactly what I see happening in the world. Some people like it. Some people don't. But the ball is still the ball, no matter what kind of spin is put on it.